South's Fever
by Martienne
Summary: Agent South Dakota had given up everything for Project Freelancer. Well, almost everything. An old memory helps her to let go. South/Wash


Agent South Dakota. She had slipped into the skin of this name so deeply now. Her old name, her old life…hell, even her old face—she almost expected that if she pulled off her helmet and looked into a mirror she would see nothing but another MJOLNIR helmet staring back at her. She had become cold, cruel, calculating. Subversion, deception…it was all there now. She had done it to even those she cared the most about (at one time in her life, anyway) because Command had demanded it. She had given herself wholly to the Freelancer project now.

Training had been brutal. Not only were the recruits expected to reach their physical peak of fitness. They were expected to learn to banish all compassion, all fear, any emotions that could subvert the goals of the Project. Freelancers were expected to be calculating, cold-blooded killers who took no prisoners and never backed down under fire. South would have expected these requirements to leave little time for drama. But there was drama all the same. Perhaps it was the tension, the paradox of being expected to behave as though the other agents were friends and comrades, yet simultaneously being trained that killing a Freelancer turncoat was an essential duty.

Mix this with South's history with…certain…other recruits to the Project, and it was no surprise that the day's training was interfering with her sleep. Her eyes were closed but she felt her lids flicker as she tried not to open them and stare out into the darkness. She turned over and buried her face into her pillow. Emotions, thoughts, memories agitated her mind into a roiling discourse of sights, sounds, voices and discomfort. And among all the flotsam was David's face, except now he had become Wash in the same way she had become South and this was impossible. Impossible, this could not be overcome. They were committed to the project and anything that might have blossomed between them—forget the fact that South had done so much to sabotage that, it didn't matter now—it was all lost to the guns and the training and the orders.

A thought, a memory tickled her, teased for her attentions until she opened her mind to recall it. What was that…? Oh, yes…

A concert. A symphony concert with an orchestra and a tinkling piano and operatic singers performing solos. This was the sort of thing she was forced to endure because her parents thought she should be sent to a high society prep school; old dead music written by old dead men and performed by fat women in metal bras.

Okay, there were no metal bras in this concert. In fact, the soprano was young and svelte. She reminded South of herself a bit if she were honest about it. If she cared about crap like this (which she didn't). She remembered glancing around the auditorium and catching a glance of David further down the row. David, who she had tried to toy with, whose emotional strength completely outmatched her wild instability. David cloaked himself in his wunderkind reputation, his calm demeanor and assertive intelligence. He had not let her into his little world. He would not allow her, not into that cocoon.

Then, as she regarded him, the piano player launched into the next piece, the keys chiming lightly as the soprano waited through the introduction. She began to sing the tones, the notes that soared forth from her lovely voice and mocked South where she had sat.

_I attempt from Love's sickness to fly  
In vain  
For I am myself my own fever  
For I am myself my own fever and pain_

South's eyes darted away from where they rested and shot daggers at the soprano. The soprano continued her rendition, heedless of the eyes that tried to bore holes into her skull.

_No more now, no more now  
Fond heart  
With pride no more swell  
Thou canst not raise forces, thou canst not raise forces  
Enough to rebel_

South remembered the way her heart had begun to recoil under the accusation of the lyrics. Were her only problems in matters of love because of her own pride, her own fever sickness; a terror which went before her heart as a destroyer, to see to it that no matter what she did her actions would drive others away?

_For Love has more power and less mercy than Fate,  
To make us see ruin, to make us see ruin,  
And love those to hate._

She had slammed her twisted program sheet onto the floor. She arose and stalked through the dark theatre to the posh restroom and powdered the flushed cheeks she saw in the mirror. Some old dead man wrote a song a thousand years ago accusing her of driving others away, being selfish in her motives in protecting her own heart against ruin? She breathed a long sharp breath in through her nose. Her heart _needed_ protecting against cruel fate. She was number one in this life, and no one could take that from her, not the school administrators, not her brother, and certainly not David.

The memory faded away but the song continued to reverberate in her head. Selfish motives, a drive for self-protection, a need for vanity to be stoked in order for fate to lose its grip for her ruin? What else did she need but this?

She arose silently in the darkness and opened her trunk full of her personal effects. There was a hidden slip of paper inside a book, and she snatched it up and snuck to the bathroom. When she got there she pulled the creased photograph out and held it out so she could see it one last time. Wash's senior picture. His crooked smile and an already dated haircut gazed out at her.

_I attempt from Love's sickness to fly  
In vain  
For I am myself my own fever  
For I am myself my own fever and pain_

No more final glances now. She tore the photo up into little pieces and let them flitter into the toilet bowl, like confetti that she had decided to squander. Her raised foot touched the handle and the water began to swirl, washing away the filth that fate had tried to thrust upon her and that she now so capably thrusted back. She turned her back and went back to bed. This time she fell right to sleep.

_For Love has more power and less mercy than Fate,  
To make us see ruin, to make us see ruin,  
And love those to hate._

_

* * *

_**A/N: The song I quote in this story is from the operetta _The Indian Queen._ The music was written by Henry Purcell in 1695. **

**Here is a video of a countertenor singing this piece: youtube . com/watch?v=Z7lA8ARcuy4**

**(The video is historically accurate as the role would have been played by a man during that time period.)**


End file.
